The Sin of Adam and Eve and the Restoration of the Image of God through Baptism according to Diadochus of Photike

Abstract

This study identifies four strategies to reframe theologically the story of the sin of Adam and Eve in Diadochus of Photike. The first links the drama of the Fall with a universal phenomenology of temptation, reenacted in every human sin, and offers a spiritual remedy. The second tells the fall from unity into duality suffered by all human faculties and pleads for a return to unity. The third looks at the consequences of Adam’s transgression through the lens of the distinction between image and likeness, and rereads the story of the proto-parents through the theology of Incarnation and grace. The fourth strategy uses plastic imagery such as painting and sealing to account for the restoration of the human being affected by the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve. Studying the vocabulary and the arguments of Diadochus in this framework, the essay shows that Diadochus integrates the notion of ancestral sin in an anthropology with strong incarnational, pneumatological and sacramental (especially baptismal) emphasis.